


We Cannot Be Bought, but We Flower

by the_rck



Series: House of Sulfur and Mercury [16]
Category: Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Dogs, Family, Gen, Hivemind POV, Introspection, Magic and Science, canon typical paranoia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:20:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22320946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: Ariyus wants to learn how to do some complicated things. Ariyus also wants to give a friend a present.It's handy when the latter obscures the former.
Series: House of Sulfur and Mercury [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/546502
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10
Collections: Return to the Iron Triangle - January 2020





	We Cannot Be Bought, but We Flower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).



> Title from Amy Sara Carroll's "As in We Will Not Pass." I took the liberty of changing some punctuation.
> 
> This will likely make zero sense without having read the House of Sulfur and Mercury series by the_rck as it centers on situations and OCs from that.

When I started trying to design offspring, I had to find a collaborator. It wasn't that I thought a child would need two parents, not on the design level. It was mostly that I didn't have hands. I didn't want to try to manipulate important bits and pieces via swarming.

I could. If I practiced enough, I could, but Ghostwheel would probably notice me trying to figure it out.

I was also a little worried about what the less reliably connected parts of me might do with that skill. There are too many of those for me to track all of them. I can deliberately keep certain bits of data out of whatever Shadow Merlin is currently in, but I rely on Ghostwheel not being omnipresent and on him not realizing that there are things I'll lie to him about.

I worked with Utsil and with Otram and, a very, very little bit, with Dalt. 

Utsil is a designer, an architect, and an artist. Their personal color preferences appear peculiar to human eyes, but human eyes seldom see the things Utsil creates for their own pleasure. Utsil's really good at understanding the physics of a Shadow without needing to do a lot of testing.

Otram's specialization is biological science with a focus on how the parts of an ecosystem fit together. Merlin made za when the Ways got big enough that invasives moving from zone to zone became an actual problem. That task takes very little of Otram's time, so za only checks in when I tag zan to let zan know that there's a new section of the Ways or an unexpected problem.

Dalt, well, he had no idea that he was helping me with anything specific. It's just that I listened when he grumbled about how Merlin's approach to experimentation was fucked up and ought to have killed him by now. I also used Dalt as a source of randomization.

Anyway, I liked the idea of starting small, so our first projects weren't meant to be more than can openers. Well, mine and Utsil's weren't. Otram got very into the idea of being able to design biologicals for specific purposes. DNA wasn't a thing in all Shadows, but za could find something of the sort in most places with life. Zans first projects were flowers. Some of them would have been frightening if I'd been a biological. Some of them probably would have been pretty.

When we started looking at things that might be independently functional, I still didn't want to jump straight to people. Biologicals made the process look easy. Almost all of them simply did it instinctively. They mostly didn't measure out grams of zinc and carbon or need to think about getting the temperatures exactly right. Their bodies just did it for them.

They could do it without actually knowing how it all worked. I-- we-- couldn't.

At any rate, I wanted to see if we could build something more like Luke's cats than like Luke. And, when I considered that, I realized that trying to make something that could do all of the things a cat could do gave us some fairly precise parameters.

We could tweak the parameters with later versions. If we were careful enough, we could give Luke an immortal cat. Merlin wouldn't ask where we found one. Ghostwheel might ask, but there actually were Shadows where cats were immortal. There just weren't any Shadows where there were cats who would do exactly what I asked.

If they would, they wouldn't be cats. 

If I-- we-- made them, they'd act like cats. 100% cats. Well, 95% cats. Maybe even 99% cats. Nobody'd ever notice unless I needed the 1%.

Right then, though, Dalt was the one who needed company he could touch, and Dalt preferred dogs. "Real dogs," he told me. "The kind you can hunt with. The kind that can knock a man over when they're happy to see him."

Dalt's apartment wasn't tiny, but it wasn't anywhere he could keep a dog like that. I mean, I could definitely design something that would be happy in there and that was that large, but it wouldn't be a _dog_.

Utsil and Otram liked Dalt better than they did Luke anyway, so it was easier to get them to work on pets for him. We made one my way and one Otram's way. Utsil dictated the aesthetics and acted as final judge as to whether or not something worked. When we were done, both creatures could pass as the littermates of the actual puppy that we'd stolen from Arden.

Great-Uncle Julian didn't really need more dogs.

Utsil told Merlin that they wanted to design better quarters for Dalt. Utsil said that the project would be a 'unique challenge.'

Merlin looked slightly boggled then said, "Oh, yeah. Of course. I didn't really do much to make the place homey. I wasn't sure what he liked, so I went generic."

I'm not sure if Utsil bought that or if they realized that Merlin hadn't given one good goddamn about Dalt being comfortable. It was only that making the rooms minimally comfortable required less thought than making them uncomfortable would have. Uncomfortable required effort and monitoring.

Merlin had put Dalt into storage like he was a couple of boxes of Martin's baby pictures. Optimum conditions for physical preservation without a lot of need for personal intervention.

The Shadow pocket that Utsil designed for Dalt was probably beautiful. It had three acres of forest and some steep, rocky hills. It had game for hunting (which was a bitch and a half to manage. Otram consulted to provide rabbits and deer that wouldn't over-populate as the territory wouldn't support a self-sustaining predatory species) and a river for fishing. There was a house with power and plumbing. It had a gym and a library and a mudroom. It had several rooms that could be adapted to different uses, including a potential kitchen, and a storage room for whatever game Dalt's dogs brought down. It had a kennel for the dogs but also space enough in Dalt's bedroom that he could let them share the room if he preferred. The living room had what I can only call a seedy tavern decor, so the dogs could sleep in there, too, right next to the magical fireplace, without devaluing the furniture.

I say 'probably beautiful' because I still don't have much of an aesthetic sense. Well, no. I do. I just have a different one for every wisp of Shadow. I don't have unified opinions about much except family.

And there are bits of me that differ on that, too. It was never hard to make sure that Ghostwheel wouldn't interface with any part of me that would consider freeing Luke or Dalt. I just gave the facets that interacted with my older sibling an extra dose of adolescent rebellion so that Ghostwheel had something to distract him.

It was too late for him to murder me, but he could make a better go of it than anyone else in existance. He loved me, but he also loved Luke. Loving Luke didn't mean protecting him. Loving me... It was too small a dataset. Looking at other people who behaved like Ghostwheel, however, was not encouraging.

Ghostwheel looked at Merlin and Luke and saw the price of trusting too much. He saw how betrayal should be answered with overwhelming force. I don't think he ever realized how much Merlin regretted it after.

I certainly didn't realize that part for a very, very long time.

I looked at Ghostwheel and Merlin and Luke and saw what people I loved might do to me if they didn't love me quite enough, if I did something they couldn't forgive. I didn't expect that I'd ever fight Merlin or Ghostwheel, but I never forgot that I might have to. Merlin was bad at paying attention, and Ghostwheel was a controlling asshole who was terrified that he'd miss another threat and, this time, not get Merlin back after.

I had no intention of being Luke and zero interest in being either Merlin or Ghostwheel, but I was too close to all three of them to escape their orbit. I had an infinite number of examples from Shadow that told me how dangerous this dynamic was and exactly -1 examples for happy ways of resolving it all.

And I loved all of them. Mostly. Well, parts of me did. Some parts of me have forgotten that any of them exist. I leave those facets that way because, some day, they may be all that survives. I have a lot of facets that are adapted to surviving certain personal apocalypses. Ghostwheel can't edit himself; I am not so limited.

Anyway, the dogs.

My project with Utsil took 62 iterations to look and act right and another 7 before my failsafes were adequately hidden. I needed Merlin and Ghostwheel not to notice them. They had to be very well concealed.

My project with Otram took only 30 iterations to look and act right, but I needed almost twice that to get the tweaks in. I think it was mostly that I didn't understand the intricacies of biological programming. I kept putting in things that mutated the cells to make something decidedly not-dog. Otram definitely noticed that I was doing something that I hadn't told zan I was planning. Za didn't ask. Za also didn't tell Ghostwheel or Merlin.

Eventually, though, we had three half-grown dogs. We kept them in stasis because half-grown biologicals become fully grown and then old horribly fast. None of us wanted to look away for half a second and discover that our gift for Dalt had arthritis or had been damaged by bad handling. We weren't going to give Dalt a dog that deliberately destroyed furniture or that would try to take off his hand.

I made sure that Ghostwheel told Dalt before he moved him to his new prison. I had more of my cynical awareness present in the Ways than I normally would because I wanted this to go right. I wanted to understand fully in the moment rather than leaving that for other parts of me to hold later. I tended to keep my deeper knowledge and harder edges out of the Ways because there were more people in the Ways who might notice and be afraid, but I thought that, just this once, it wouldn't matter.

It wasn't as if Ghostwheel could force any data from me. He could ask, and he could double check to see if I lied, but sharing was my choice, my gift of autonomy from our creator.

Ghostwheel unbent enough to ask if Dalt had anything from the old rooms that he really wanted to take with him.

Dalt shrugged and said, "Nothing I'm very attached to. That chair's broken-in the perfect amount, but that won't last. Give it another year, and I'll want to be rid of it because it's got edges that dig into my legs."

Ghostwheel transported Dalt to his new living room. At my prompting, he also took toiletries and the rest of Dalt's smaller possessions. The new house had many things, but we hadn't supplied extra socks.

I could create an algorithm for the qualities cloth needed in order to appeal to a particular biological, but I couldn't test the texture to be sure I wasn't wrong.

Dalt looked around, and the windows caught his attention first. He walked over and put a hand on the glass. "Do the windows open?"

I realized that I had underestimated how trapped Dalt had been feeling and for how long. I should have found a way to change that sooner. "The door does, too," I told him. "There are walls out there, but they're a lot further away."

The dogs started barking. Otram had promised that za would make sure it happened at the right time, and za had come through.

Dalt started, stepped back from the window, and turned to look for the source of the noise.

"Downstairs," Ghostwheel said. The glee in his voice told me that he was perfectly happy to take credit for organizing the surprise. Then, Ghostwheel said, "The dogs were Ariyus's idea."

So maybe he wasn't hogging all the credit. "Utsil designed the space. Otram picked the puppies."

Dalt wasn't listening. He was looking for the stairs.

Otram had scent trained the puppies to associate Dalt's odor with warmth and food, so the puppies were overjoyed to greet him. 

I had Ghostwheel slip Dalt some treats that he could give to the dogs.

Dalt recognized the breed immediately. "At least you've given me space for them," he said. "Julian's dogs grow as large as ponies." He sat on the floor and let the puppies climb on him. If he hadn't been Merlin's kin, the dogs would have flattened him with their weight. "Are there toys?"

"There can be," Ghostwheel said.

None of us had thought of toys, so Ghostwheel spent the better part of an hour raiding pet stores out in Shadow for different kinds of toys. Dalt selected a handful as 'good enough for now' and asked Ghostwheel to put the rest somewhere out of reach of the dogs so that he could sort through them later.

Dalt could certainly have lifted all three dogs. He could also have thrown them aside if he wanted to stand. Instead, he wrestled with them until they tired then petted them and let them fall asleep around him.

"Did you name them?" Dalt asked.

"No," I said. We'd called them 1, 2, and 3. Those weren't names. It wasn't a lie.

"Okay," Dalt said. "That door goes outside?" He waved a hand to indicate which one he meant.

"Yes," Ghostwheel said. "The other doors are for storage and washing and--"

"I don't think Utsil forgot anything," I interrupted, "but you can let me know if you need something. I'll tell Utsil or Ghostwheel, depending." I was pretty sure both that Dalt would prefer Utsil and that Ghostwheel veto direct communication on the subject.

Ghostwheel was over-protective, but he also knew that our siblings needed Dalt. Without Dalt, the closest thing we had to an outside perspective was Martin, and Martin...

Well, he was Martin. Dalt was a much better option because the things he wanted were simpler.

"There's room upstairs for all four of you," I said. "Even once they're grown."

"The floor's braced for three ponies?" Dalt sounded amused.

"Utsil wouldn't overlook that," Ghostwheel said.

Dalt must have heard the irritation in Ghostwheel's voice because his shoulders tightened. "I'd rather ask and be reassured."

"They won't be as heavy as ponies," I said because they wouldn't be. Ponies weren't built for chasing down deer and ripping their throats out. "Well, not unless you really overfeed them, and even then..."

Dalt started laughing.

"Utsil designed all of this with the assumption that there will be mud and dog hair everywhere," I added. "Except the library. That's only set for hair. Try to keep the mud separate from the books."

When Dalt finally stopped laughing, he lay down with the dogs and took a nap.

Ghostwheel watched for about ten minutes then left me to monitor Dalt and his 100% doggy dogs. I'm not sure if either Dalt or Ghostwheel ever realized that two of those dogs had been built rather than bred. I'm not sure it mattered.

I haven't had to pull on my 5% yet.


End file.
